On 07/11/2014 09:34 AM, John Mark Vandenberg wrote:
Could ops confirm they have the username of each logged in edit at their finger tips (i.e. roughly as easy to access as the user-agent)? Pywikibot doesnt permit logged out edits.
We do, after the fact, from the same data Checkusers have access to.
There is some talk that if pywikibot doesnt fix its user-agent string, ops may need to block 'the toolserver' - could ops confirm that they would usually block a bot account before killing a well known IP range like 'the toolserver' (or 'the wmf labs')
That's certainly what *I* would do, and the same applies at least to the English Wikipedia (where the blocking page clearly points out "sensitive" ranges which should not be blocked except in cases of dire emergencies).
I'm not sure where that talk occured; I have not been made aware of it and it didn't filter through the normal ops channels that I've seen. I'm a little surprised by Antoine's suggestion that it is important that the bot user's information is in the UA string - it doesn't seem useful or necessary to me. Bots shouldn't be editing while logged out in the first place, so the bot account will normally always be plain to see.
Obviously, having the user account in the UA would help a bit in tracking down errant bots when they happen but that should be a rare occurance and we have other methods to use in those cases.
-- Marc